Category: Tobacco Products Directive

Will the Netherlands become the next casually negligent ally of the cigarette trade? Twenty-four experts advise a rethink

So let’s make the e-cigs less appealing and see what happens… what could possibly go wrong?

The Netherlands is proposing to ban e-cigarette flavours – what could possibly go wrong?

The government of the Netherlands,  led by Paul Blokhuis, State Secretary for Health, Welfare and Sport, is in imminent danger of fooling itself into becoming an unwitting ally of the cigarette trade.  By taking measures to make vaping less attractive (notably by proposing a ban on all non-tobacco flavours for e-cigarettes), it threatens to degrade the appeal of a low-risk rival to cigarettes, provide regulatory protection to the cigarette trade, prolong smoking, obstruct quitting, and add to the burden of disease and death. All this in the name of protecting youth, while managing to harm both adults and adolescents. Quite a feat for any politician.

The problem is hubris – believing that the world responds to regulation in the way the regulator thinks it should. Experience suggests foreseeable perverse consequences will be the result of the ill-conceived prohibitions of much safer alternatives to smoking, including flavoured e-cigarettes.

It really isn’t difficult to understand why and how this would happen – I can only assume the State Secretary received very poor advice, which would not be unusual in this field.  Nevertheless, twenty-four international experts have set out the arguments and evidence in detail in a submission to the Dutch government, hoping to spare Mr Blokhuis later embarrassment and, even more importantly, to avoid yet more death and disease from smoking in the Netherlands.  It should also be a wake-up call to like-minded politicians and naive policymakers in the United States, European Union, and the World Health Organisation who continue to fail to grasp the impact of low-risk products in the real world.

The case is set out in 30-page submission to a Dutch government consultation on the measure.  The relevant documents are:

To provide a more digestible version of the submission, I have included below the twelve sections of the summary below with a link to the corresponding twelve sections with more detail and references.

Continue reading “Will the Netherlands become the next casually negligent ally of the cigarette trade? Twenty-four experts advise a rethink”

Response to the extremely poor European Commission SCHEER preliminary opinion on e-cigarettes

….and another thing.

 

Further to my 30 Sept blog: European Commission SCHEER scientific opinion on e-cigarettes – a guide for policymakers.

I have made a short submission to the consultation on the European Commission SCHEER Committee preliminary opinion on e-cigarettes.  You can respond to the consultation on this very poor scientific assessment here, where you can find all relevant documentation.  The closing date is just before midnight CET, Monday 26 October 2020. All contributions are helpful, but keep it polite, objective and on the subject – the science of e-cigarettes – and most importantly, in your own words.

In my view, the problems with the report are too serious and fundamental to justify a line-by-line and paper-by-paper incremental review.  I set out the fundamental problems on my 30 September blog:  European Commission SCHEER scientific opinion on e-cigarettes – a guide for policymakers.  So rather than pretend that this dreadful report can be easily fixed with a few more references and some different takes on the evidence, I have reiterated the main themes of that blog in the “Summary” box of the consultation submission form and provided the blog as a link and upload.  I’ve no idea whether they will give this the slightest attention, but they should, because I’ll back when they’ve done the final report.

Update 26 Oct 2020. It’s the closing date and I’ve made an additional submission.

Here’s my response: Continue reading “Response to the extremely poor European Commission SCHEER preliminary opinion on e-cigarettes”

European Commission SCHEER scientific opinion on e-cigarettes – a guide for policymakers

“C’mon… we’ll never get away with that“

Introduction

The SCHEER opinion on e-cigarettes

On 23 September 2020, the European Commissions’ Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) provided its Preliminary Opinion on Electronic Cigarettes (context & abstract, preliminary report PDF).  This opinion is important because it is one input to the report on the implementation of the EU Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EC, under Article 28 of the Directive.  This review should complete by 20 May 2021, and it may form the basis for a further revision of the Tobacco Products Directive.  The Committee’s mandate (Request for Scientific Opinion) sets out its terms of reference.

Consultation

The preliminary scientific opinion is open for consultation responses until 26 October 2020. The consultation system is here: Public consultation on electronic cigarettes and looks designed to deter responses to the extent possible. ETHRA, European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates, provides guidance on responding here.  However, that is not the only way to respond to it, though responding directly is important.  Another way is to approach the people who are intended to make sense of and use the opinion – policymakers in EU member states and European Commission, politicians in the EU legislature, and stakeholders in the political policymaking process. This post is for them.

This post

In this post, I discuss why the SCHEER preliminary opinion offers no useful analysis or relevant insights to policymakers. It is not that the committee has not reviewed a lot of literature: it has. It stems from a more fundamental problem: a failure to frame the scientific knowledge in a way that will assist policymakers in considering what, if anything, to do next.  Though policymakers should be the primary audience, the report also provides little of value to other communities of interest – smokers, vapers, parents, public health or medical practitioners, or businesses.

It starts with reproducing the report abstract and then groups my advice to appropriately sceptical policymakers under ten headings. Continue reading “European Commission SCHEER scientific opinion on e-cigarettes – a guide for policymakers”

Brexit and vaping

In this post, I try to anticipate what Brexit means for the UK, for the Tobacco Products Directive and what that might mean for UK and European vapers. it’s in two parts because we need to speculate a little on how Brexit will play out and then how that will affect the TPD compliance in the UK as the TPD evolves from TPD2 to TPD3.

Part 1. Brexit: what next?  

Part 2. Brexit, Tobacco Products Directive and vaping – the outlook

Continue reading “Brexit and vaping”

Advertising code at fault over e-cigarette public health ad ban

This year’s Stoptober campaign encourages smokers to try vaping – bravo!

Update 24 September: Cancer Research UK says its hasn’t “been prevented from doing anything by the ASA that we are aware of, so don’t know why this story appeared” and PHE ads were still running on TV last night. So please treat the posting below as an analysis of the legal situation.

So newspaper reports suggest we have the ridiculous situation of the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banning adverts for vaping that are part of a public health quit smoking campaign, ‘Stoptober’. The Sun reports UP IN SMOKE: Anti-smoking adverts by Cancer Research see charity in row over barmy Brussels rules that would BAN them.

The ASA is quoted in The Sun’s article:

The ASA said yesterday:  “Our rules prohibits ads for unlicensed, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes, in line with European law which took effect in 2016.  Ads for products and brands are prohibited and have not been seen or heard on TV or radio since last year.”

I have not seen the Cancer Research ads, but the TV advert from Public Health England (screen shot above) clearly mentions e-cigarettes so would be caught by the ASA’s reasoning.

The Sun concludes that the problem lies with the ‘barmy’ EU directive?  But does it?  Not so fast… Continue reading “Advertising code at fault over e-cigarette public health ad ban”

English tobacco control plan embraces tobacco harm reduction – world first

Positive…

The Department of Health (UK/England) today released its tobacco control plan for England: Towards a smoke-free generation: tobacco control plan for England (PDF)

The embrace of vaping and other low-risk alternatives to smoking runs through the text. This is probably the first significant government policy paper anywhere that recognises and pursues the opportunities of tobacco harm reduction, rather than defining these technologies as a threat to be suppressed.  For that, the Department of Health and its allies deserve considerable credit. Continue reading “English tobacco control plan embraces tobacco harm reduction – world first”

Letter to European Commissioner for Better Regulation on the worst regulation in the EU – the snus ban

A damaging regulation that should not exist should not be defended in court

Updated 19 July 2017 with the reply.

Eighteen of us have written a detailed letter to Mr Frans Timmerman, the EU’s Commissioner for Better Regulation (amongst other things) drawing his attention to one of the worst regulations in the EU, the ban on oral tobacco, better known as snus. This ban is now facing challenge in the Court of Justice of the European Union (case C 151/17) by a producer, Swedish Match, and the consumer group, New Nicotine Alliance (see NNA background on the case).

The letter is available here (PDF): Lifting the unjustified European Union ban on oral tobacco or “snus” in the light of ongoing legal action

The covering email below outlines the main arguments detailed in the letter. Continue reading “Letter to European Commissioner for Better Regulation on the worst regulation in the EU – the snus ban”

New Nicotine Alliance calls for repeal of EU e-cigarette regulation and snus ban

trash

New Nicotine Alliance proposes that the forthcoming Great Repeal Act is used to repeal pointless, burdensome and restrictive EU regulation of e-cigarettes and to lift the illegal, unethical and anti-scientific ban on snus.  This may be a ‘quick win’ from Brexit at the point of the departure of the UK from the EU.  The government will need to show that there are at least some benefits.

The Great Repeal Act will not actually repeal that much of substance. It will mainly just convert the vast body of EU law that applies in the UK to domestic law. But there is scope for some crowd-pleasing repeals of especially poor regulation, of which the TPD provisions related to tobacco harm reduction are the most obvious candidate.

Here is the NNA letter to Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt.  Continue reading “New Nicotine Alliance calls for repeal of EU e-cigarette regulation and snus ban”

No surrender! The fight against harmful, incompetent and pointless European law goes on

No surrender

Fantastic to see the increasingly powerful UK vaping consumer voice tearing into poor policy and bad law that will do nothing but harm while meddling incompetently in the free choices of adults and free movement of goods. The Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and its UK implementing regulations are truly dreadful.

Here are three things to look at:

  1. New Nicotine Alliance – Letter to the Department of Health – on the harmful unintended consequences of the TPD
  2. New Nicotine Alliance – Letter to the Prime Minister – on the escape from the TPD
  3. House of Lords fatal motion and #LordsVapeVote campaign TAKE ACTION!

Continue reading “No surrender! The fight against harmful, incompetent and pointless European law goes on”

Who cares about a few thousand dead? Defending EU limits on the strength of nicotine e-liquids

graveyard
Not that many dead – what’s all the fuss about…?

Updated 16 May 2016

Apparently, there are still people in public health trying to defend the EU Tobacco Products Directive as it applies to vaping! It’s a ludicrous measure, that protects the cigarette trade, has costs and risks that vastly outweigh the non-existent benefits. ASH (London) appears relaxed about the nicotine strength limit: New EU rules on nicotine strength not a problem for most vapers it declares this morning (16 May 2016).

ASH claims that because ‘only’ nine percent of current vapers use liquids over the limit set by the EU Tobacco Products Directive, concerns raised in Parliament (Lords debate, Prime Minister’s Questions) are unjustified:

Concerns raised in Parliament [4] about the EU rules are not borne out by the ASH Smokefree GB Adult Survey. Only 9% of vapers report using e-liquid containing 19mg/ml or more of nicotine (the limit set by the EU Tobacco Products Directive is 20mg/ml).

Or maybe Parliament is right and ASH is wrong…? How might one respond to this defence of the indefensible?  Continue reading “Who cares about a few thousand dead? Defending EU limits on the strength of nicotine e-liquids”